Analgesia
by Alexandra Spar
Summary: Wilson has an apocalyptic migraine; House ends up sorting him out. Cool hands holding one's head are more important than the endless minutiae of reality. Oneshot, implied House/Wilson deep friendship.


Disclaimer:_ House, MD_, its characters,storylines, and related indicia belong to its creators and copyright holders. No infringement is intended and no money is being made.

* * *

Time comes in waves. Sometimes they speed up; sometimes they are so slow. Oh, God, so slow. 

He can feel the waves rippling slowly, slowly, slowly through him. It's almost pleasant. In a little while he'll get up and collect his briefcase and go home

_thirty steps to the stairwell and then and then more not sure how many but then out to the lot and that is fifty-eight steps to the car unless I have to wait for someone to pass and then I lose count_

and once he is home he can close the blinds and curl up on the couch and bury his head—thudding, thwacking like a turnip full of blood—under the cushions and try not to be awake until the headache is over.

He's taken one of the little injectors—the packet is blue, silvery blue, as if the manufacturers are hoping to soothe their consumers with sheer colour—and felt the snaking somehow _fibrous_ pain of the stuff being shoved into his muscle; and the agony had receded a little, the sparkling blindness faded to the rim of his vision. He'd been sick once, coming back to his office and having almost immediately to run for the bathroom: after, the nausea had dropped back to its steady beating waves in time with the thudding, thwacking of his head. He doesn't think he'll be ill again. He just hopes he can see well enough to get home.

The door bangs open. It's a terrible, earthshaking sound, echoing inside all the hollow places of his skull. He can feel it reverberate. And then a voice. A rough voice, a familiar one, not entirely unkind.

"Wilson," it says. "Wilson, you're an idiot."

He can recognize the voice. It doesn't seem to signify. "House," he says, dully pleased at the recognition. "Go 'way."

Exasperated noise. And then there are cold fingers on his forehead, on his temples, and oh god but it feels nice against that thudding. The fingertips rest gently on the throbbing veins there, and then settle, one cool palm cupped around his forehead, the other resting lightly at the back of his neck. "You are worse than an idiot," House says, somewhere beyond all that pain; but his voice is quiet enough that it doesn't reverberate in all the rooms of the mansion of his head. "Did you think I wouldn't recognize hemicrania? I mean, this is absolutely classic. Can you see?"

He can't help weakly nudging his head into that coolness. "Ngh. A bit. It's…..worst around the edges."

"Over the worst, then." House is opening drawers, having taken away his other hand. "What have you taken?"

"…..injector," Wilson manages. "Silvery blue. Hurt. Helped…a little."

There's rustling, and House has the things in his hand, and the cool fingers go away from Wilson, and he tries hard not to whimper. It hurts, it hurts so deeply.

"Hm. I'd ask you which cheek you wanted it stabbed into, but given the circumstances I'll just presume." The injectors are designed for a large muscle. He can't remember what the rules are for administration, how many doses allowed per day. He thinks he's over it. There's a sudden little pain in his right thigh, and then after a little there's blessed, blessed blackness.

Soft pressure against his shoulder, his hip, thigh, his foot. Something soft and smooth and warm under his ear. And an astonishing, a revelatory, lack of pain.

Wilson opens his eyes, and it doesn't hurt to do it, and he can see. After a few moments he can even focus, and what he sees isn't his office at all, but a room he's seen before, that isn't his own. He's lying on House's couch, and by the timbre of the light it's almost midday.

He uncurls himself, aware that he's wearing borrowed pyjamas and that his ribs and back ache from being sick the day before, and that sitting up does not cause him to want to die. These are all revelations.

After a little he shakes himself into reality, and goes to find House. Who is gone, as is his bike. There's a note, though, by the phone.

_I called you in. Don't take a piss test for a week or so, and don't be more of an idiot than you can help._

He blinks, and wanders back to the couch, curling up, and dully aware that there really wasn't a way he could have gone in, even had House managed to get him back to his own place. He'd been….out of it. Very out.

Out enough to have been given a shot of something a lot stronger than Vicodin. He sighs, closing his eyes again, and can't help being grateful.

There are times, Wilson reflects, when it really does not do to hang on with one's teeth to the edges of propriety.


End file.
